The UN propped International Telecommunication Union (ITU) began its World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) on December 3 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, aptly named ‘wicket’. Notably, the panel of 193 national delegates was to include Internet giant Google, which decided to protest the regulation of the Word Wide Web in person. Seven days into the eleven day conference both Facebook and Google Internet services crashed. In the closing moments of the WCIT, the USA, UK, Canada and Australia walked out on proceedings that counted a show-of-hands as a binding constituent resolution.

The day after the Google/FB crash, the NYC Post announced Google’s new holding company in Bermuda, shielding the Online giant from some two billion dollars of global tax deficit. The following day, Google admitted to shutting down its Shopping service in China. Meanwhile, within the conference, voting blocks had formed: India, Japan, Germany, Italy lead Europe in a rally maintaining a deregulated Internet. Almost half of the 193 nations, including Russia, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia went on to ratify a treaty that boasts strong African, Arabian, Asian and Latin-American membership. Some fifty nations reserved the right to ratify at a later date while some nations simply abstained.

The conference was to mitigate the over one thousand three hundred proposals that critics attest will aid and abet government crack-downs on free speech. Censorship isn’t the only issue; some blocks believe in charging Internet providers for providing free content, while zeroing in and taxing international content to mitigate the specter of confusing multiculturalism in fragile societies.

American developers see these UN tariffs as nothing less than forced economic redistribution of good and services focused on empowering individuals to commune through communication: “Engineers, companies and people that build and use the Web have no vote. The billions of people around the globe that use the Internet, the experts that build and maintain it, should be included,” stated Google Online.

ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré readily admits to targeting the world’s mobile-phone population (90% of the world by his account) and converting two-thirds of the Earth – the offline population – to an Internet lifestyle. Obviously, he’s talking about leveraging the current market dominators to accelerate market penetration as a UN policy; the preamble of the WCIT treaty certainly states so much in legalese.

While the doctor claims to be fighting for the rights of the developing world, his agency’s using development to separate the bestowers of this technology from their clients by standing against a free and unregulated multicultural Web. The proposition floated by some Europeans to fund developing-market intrusion by taxing international services underlines this point. Information Society politicians seeking to mass the market of the majority of the Earth’s population as an international politic to promote appeal is a founding philosophy of the Internet to be sure. Now it stands for politicians’ grab to price-fix, promoting foreign lobbies in a vicious circle that rewards volume and seeks to grant the voluminous ingenuity over protestations of leading companies.

Despite a unanimous vote resolving USA Congress opposition to the WCIT philosophy of a government-controlled Web December 5 – two days after the start of the WCIT – the USA must admit that it is only due to government facilitation that its miracle machine is organized by the non-for-profit giant Internet Corporation for Assigned Names And Numbers (ICANN).

While Westerners decry governed regulation of the ultimate portal into multiculturalism, the arguments against subordination to stultifying bureaucrats and against UN regulation of App-oriented browsers have wilt before the principal accusation: cultural Fascism. But corporations must be most fearful of increased global competition and powerful ITU regulations that can standardize international telecommunication equipment, championing a myriad of local entrepreneurs to introduce the Americans to the margin-cutting global realities of that nation-state controlled thing: free-speech.

Americans touting to possess the ultimate machine in free speech stand the most to lose as a brand.

But no-one mentions what UN presence represents more than anything else to free-market governments: a biting hindsight that can sue even the intelligence community for human rights’ violations by promoting free-speech in violation of hate-crime legislation.

Surely, the USA could benefit from an international body of inquisitive souls who would like to know how in the GPS-age could the awkward master-mind of the Aurora massacre manage to kill an Airforce Sergeant among his victims in a Colorado movie-house.

UN restrictions against prosecuting neglect may melt in the face of over-sight reality: an out-manned capitalist economy that no-longer polices itself with integrity but only as some Nation-State that is neither Fascist nor Communist nor watching nor political – simply disturbed.

Perhaps this is why a group of WCIT experts showed up in Stanford a week before the Dubai meeting to take part in the discussion: ‘Sticky WCIT: Is This the End of the Internet?’

WCIT marks the setting of the World Wide Web behind the accessible Web and the State-controlled ubiquity of the Internet. Perhaps all three were once synonymous. Now, like a nation-state of three minds, like a Common Wealth of Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, each community answers for itself to the benefit of the engineered whole.

Perhaps this is why long after the WCIT vote should have been published at the top of engine searches Online, discrepancies rather than harmonies leapt to the fore. ITU spokesperson Sarah Parkes reportedly contended that Google did not attend WCIT as it chose not to participate as an IT member.

So it was a haughty observer?

Google is now listed as the top Congressional lobbyist to 118 Congress members on OpenSecrets.org. So on my Internet search at the end of ITU WCIT, rather than finding a published vote tally, all that was readily available were links to the thirty page agreement and consensus on English outrage. After hours of contradictory reporting, a WCITleaks.org site rose to the helm, linking leading voices of the 4th Estate: the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Vanity Fair.

Follow up news was immediately inconclusive: the English-speaking world had spoken; nothing happened.

The Intellectual Property now isn’t a language – isn’t a code – it’s coding which is only something from nothing according to latest wicket.

Image Courtesy : Itupictures

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London, U.K. — Recent data released by Bingoport.co.uk, the UK’s independent authority on online bingo, has shown that Google is the most popular non-bingo website for online bingo players, narrowly ahead of Facebook.

The data, released in Bingoport’s most recent Quarterly Bingo Trends Report, was compiled through surveying Bingoport’s extensive database of online bingo players, representing a broad and unbiased section of the online bingo playing market.

According to the survey, 70% of online bingo players regularly use Google, compared with 69% who regularly use Facebook. This is in contrast to the greater UK online population, where reportedly, 77.7% are Facebook users and over 90% use Google search.

The lower Google share can be attributed to higher usage of other search engines, with 16% of online bingo players using Bing/MSN and 22% using Yahoo, markedly higher market shares than in the greater online population.

As for the lower rate of Facebook usage, Bingoport’s Operations Manager, Andrew Housego, believes it is indicative of the social nature of online bingo sites. “Although most online bingo players use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family, there are plenty whose sole point of online social contact is their favourite bingo site. In fact, there are plenty of online bingo players whose only activity on the internet is accessing their favourite bingo site.”

Other non-bingo sites frequented regularly by online bingo players included Amazon.co.uk, eBay and YouTube, along with banking sites, news and travel websites.

Image Courtesy of  niallkennedy

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Social network sites can do more than entertain us, they can actually help people find employment. And even those who have good jobs can benefit from being apart of a social network site; they can grow their contact list and create content related to one’s training.

The following popular social networking sites can be very helpful tools when trying to advance one’s career:

LinkedIn: the largest professional social network. Creating a profile on LinkedIn allows the user to display their resume, interests, and career objectives. Past employers are able to “recommend” someone who worked for them in the past.

Recruiters and human resource professionals are able to view users’ skills sets; there is a chance they will reach out to LinkedIn members if there is a job opportunity that fits their specific abilities. This is also a helpful place to follow news on one’s favorite businesses and industries. Additionally, LinkedIn posts job openings for members to look at.

Xing: it is similar to LinkedIn. Xing has been very successful in Germany, although it is being used in other countries as well. With more than 11 million users, Xing is giving Linkedin some competition. It allows professionals to connect and engage with each other.

Twitter: a social networking sites with a limitation: 140 characters. Twitter is unique in its use of fewer words. It is a great tool to share and follow interesting content. It is easy for users to “follow” companies, organizations, and individual people that they like. “Retweeting” comments by people can be a great way to show interest in the topic or company they represent.

Also, sometimes companies or individuals will post job openings on Twitter.

Facebook: It is possible to use this popular social media site, with its more than 500 million users, in a professional way. It is important that the user is careful with their privacy settings.

Users shouldn’t display too many personal photos or comments; However it is possible to use Facebook for both personal and professional use if the user is mindful.

Google +: This new social networking site consolidates social networks with other platforms. Google + combines the content sharing and viral quality of Twitters with Facebook’s communication format; with more characters and “like” buttons and commenting options. Also, creating “circles” on Google + is a simple way to organize your content and control who sees your information.

One of the most important things to remember when using any of these sites to advance oneself professionally, is to display a conservative and appropriate photo. It’s also important to not be a pest. Sending too many private messages to someone could scare them away instead of making them interested in you as a potential employee.

Users should try to adapt to the different types of social sites they are using. While each has its specific rules and etiquette, the strategy of engaging with companies and presenting oneself professionally applies to each site when searching for a job.

With today’s weak economy, it’s necessary to be patient when searching for a job. Being resourceful is also key. Getting a presence on all the different platforms can be helpful; maximizing one’s presence and connections to others.

There are other ways to use the web to advance professionally that doesn’t involve social network sites. Creating and updating a blog can be a great way to present yourself, your skills, and your interests. Blogger and WordPress are popular blog platforms.

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In our age, the difference between real and virtual life is often blurred — but while technology does not replace what makes us human beings; when we use it, it tend to add value to our sense of self-being. Professor Robert Dunbar of Oxford University spoke about a predefined number of 150; this is the average number designed for human beings’ capacity of close friends.

Whether you know it or not, 150 is the number of friends we can actually call friends and it is a number which is dependent on our neocortical area. 150 are those with whom we are not just saying hello or sharing jobs, but those of whom we can ask for help or share deep details of our lives. They are the ones we can distribute time and energy to, without handling it as a burden or a cost of opportunity.

Those 150 people are the average the human brain can manage. The number can vary between 100 and 230, and only the extent of our brain capacity or of our available time would let us deal with more friends, as Robert Dunbar delicately describes in interviews and in his writings. The number is not equivalent to our Facebook friends though.

Professor Dunbar explains that a human touch, a real one, is worth a thousand words and until technology can simulate virtual touch, we still have to put a line between Facebook friends and ‘real’ friends. Facebook statistics shows that the average number of friends for the average Facebook user is 130.

It seems that, although many of us live in a virtual world for more than half of our daily lives, we seem to remain in touch with reality, or maybe our brain obliges us to. We might declare 500 virtual friends because we work ourselves into a world where we are obliged to keep track with hundreds of people, but our real life is limited to the 150 number in practice.

Technology and the social networks are only tools that extend our capability to work beyond the limit. Our brain and cognitive capacity is adapted to and confirmed by the 150 number — even while we become addicted to globalization through technology. The development makes us more intelligent and more evolved as human beings.

We have to manage our time according to the technological progress, and meanwhile, we have to shape our relationships in the same pace. Life is defined by numbers. Dunbar, as well as Fibonacci, puts our lives in numbers. Instinctively we feel these numbers; our brain is limited to them, even though sometimes technology, globalization and life by itself show us that limits and numbers can be recreated.

In this way, technology brings added value to what human capacity cannot handle at this point.

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Facebook recently made a statement that former White House chief-of-staff Erskine Bowles has joined its board of directors. Bowles was recently appointed as the co-chair of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010.

Together with his co-worker Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, he had released a proposal to greatly reduce government spending which called forth a lot of criticism from the Democrats. Another blow from the Democratic Party: He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2004 on the Democratic ticket.

Also a former president of the 17-campus University of North Carolina (2006 to 2010) and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton (1996 to 1998), Bowles serves on the boards of several other companies, including Morgan Stanley, Cousins Properties Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp. and Belk Inc.

His appointment expands Facebook’s board to seven members.”Erskine has held important roles in government, academia and business which have given him insight into how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, said in a statement.

“Along with his experience founding companies, this will be very valuable as we continue building new things to help make the world more open and connected.” Reuters reported on Wednesday that the company, which is expected to go public at some point next year, doubled its revenue to $1.6 billion in 2011′s first half.” Facebook has clearly emerged as a transformative force in the world,” Bowles said.”

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/senatormarkwarner/

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In Germany, Facebook has agreed to voluntarily sign a privacy code to protect users’ information. This agreement comes after Richard Allen, Facebook’s director of European public policy, met with Hans-Peter Friedrich, Germany’s Interior Minister.

Facebook has experienced widespread criticism in Germany for quite some time now about the company’s privacy policy. In early August, the German data protection authority asked Facebook to disable its’ facial recognition feature. The authorities argued that the feature allowed an unauthorized amount of data to be collected about individuals.

The problem started in August when Thilo Weichert, the privacy commissioner for the German state Schleswig-Holstein, announced that any website that featured Facebook’s “like” button on their website would be fined 50,000 Euros ($70,000). Weichert believes that the button violated German user data protection laws.

The exact code will be determined at a later date, however both sides agreed that the code will be sure to create a “stronger protection of users.” The code will go above and beyond the European Union code of law and create stronger protection for German citizens. Future talks about a privacy code will not only include Facebook but also other social networks.

For the time being, Facebook and the German Interior Ministry have been able to temporarily diffuse the situation. Weichert stated that “Right now we do not plan to prosecute a specific website owner.” He went on to say that the purpose of the fine was force Facebook to look into its privacy policy.

Facebook is not the first website to have data protection issues with the German government. In 2010, Google was forced by both German federal and state protection authorities to blue street-level images of people’s homes. Hundreds of thousands of German citizens have opted to have their houses blurred out.

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Rumors started back in July that Facebook was preparing to launch a new music streaming service. This new platform is expected to be officially announced on September 22 at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco.  This service will allow users to listen to music for free without leaving Facebook.com.

Facebook will not directly stream the music itself but rather rely on partners to provide the musical content. These partners would supply music platforms from their server to play on an embedded music player on users Facebook page.

Currently Facebook is initialed partnered with three third party music service providers, Spotify, MOG, and Rdio. Similar to “liking” a Facebook page these companies will be allowed to publish users’ activity on their Facebook pages. Facebook is expected to partner with more companies in the future.

It appears that Facebook’s music platform will be a way for users share a song or playlist with Facebook friends. Playlist and song can be shared from one streaming music site to another. This music platform will make it easy for users to discover new artists based upon ones that their friends have “liked.”

If Facebook launches globally it will be providing more than 750million people with free music.  Although it is possible for this service to fail, it seems highly unlikely.  Who doesn’t love free music?

It is rumored that Facebook will not only provide music streaming, but also allow movie and video game streaming services as well.  Currently a limited number Warner Brothers and Miramax films are available to rent via Facebook.  However these limited number movie rentals don’t even compare the number of movie rentals that Netflix does.

One big question is how will this affect the future of Netflix?

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